Month: February 2012

Researchers at Rice University have found evidence “plants make predawn preparations to fend off hungry caterpillars.”  They say it’s all down to the circadian rhythm, commonly called a “body clock.” Using lights, researchers forced a test group of plants to go off-cycle, to have their days and nights mixed up. These plants were destroyed by pests, while the on-cycle plants survived relatively unscathed.

What did the plants with good sleep habits do differently? The Rice researchers point to the production of the “hormone jasmonate, which plants use to regulate the production of metabolites that interfere with insect digestion.” This hormone basically is a poison to pests, and apparently plants regulate its production based on their internal clocks.

So, make sure your plants get a good night’s sleep!

~Art

Our last post, 5 Reasons Why Business Education Conferences Are Dying, was a product of thinking about the future of the American Nursery & Landscape Association’s Management Clinic. We had originally thought to title it, “Why the Clinic Failed,” but decided to make it a more general article because we thought it might apply to more than just the Management Clinic. Now, we want to spend a few minutes forgetting the past and looking toward the future of the Clinic. Will it return? What will it look like?

We don’t possess any secret, inside knowledge. We assume the Clinic, if it does continue, will not be in Louisville. It may not be in late January. It may not be called the Clinic. It will most likely be a joint venture between ANLA & OFA. And, if you aren’t a business owner, you might not be invited.

One of the ideas we have heard mentioned over and over was that perhaps the next Clinic would be for “owners only.” Let’s examine why this could work, and why it might be a bad idea.

Why Owners Only Could Work.

1. Owners make decisions. They are the ones who control the purse strings. Managers, salespeople and buyers all may love the Clinic, but they aren’t the ones who decide whether they will attend or not.

2. Owners are willing to pay more. This has yet to be proven, actually. But the theory is that owners control the money and are willing to pay more for their own development and for high-level networking.

3. Owners need to meet for industry association business. Hey, there’s a lot of work to be done for associations, and the leaders need to meet in order to get things moving. Most of the industry leaders are also owners, so it makes sense to bring them together for both education and association business.

4. Owners can let their guard down when employees aren’t around. It can get uncomfortable to have your team listening to speaker after speaker catalog how business leaders are doing a poor job of leading and managing their teams. It is also more difficult for owners to share their struggles, doubts and failures when employees are around.

5. “Owners only” would mean a more focused, less complex conference. There wouldn’t need to be so many concurrent tracks. Fewer meeting rooms and speakers means a more cost-efficient conference.

6. There are fewer middle managers in the industry than there were a few years ago. Not sure I can prove this, but I suspect many have left the industry as companies have down-sized.

7. Timing is not as big of an issue. There’s no day on the calendar that isn’t somebody’s busy season. But the time of year is less of a concern because it’s easier for an owner to get away for a couple days than it is for several key employees.

8. A large room of business owners would be a high-value audience for sponsors. It wouldn’t matter if the conference were smaller if the all the attendees control the checkbooks. (Is that true?)

9. Owners only would probably lead to a more balanced mix of representation across the supply chain (retail/landscape/grower/greenhouse/distributor). The Clinic has for a long time been dominated by the retail sector.

10. An “owners only” conference may be easier for the OFA membership to understand; they may see the value more easily. How do you begin to explain the Clinic to someone who has never been? Maybe “owners only” helps to communicate the value.

11. An “owners only” conference may lead to better understanding/integration between the ANLA & OFA if the business owners have an opportunity to mix. Bringing multiple people from a single company can mean there is less interaction as folks from the same company spend time talking to themselves. Owners only would be more of a mixing bowl.

12. Exclusivity. An “owners only” conference may be able to be sold as an exclusive privilege to be able to attend. Perhaps there could be a cap placed on attendance…say 150. Maybe OFA could get 50 spots, ANLA would get 50 spots. They could be sold for, say, $1,000-3,000 each on a first-come-first-served basis. Then the remaining 50 could be auctioned off to the highest bidder. People want what others can’t have.

 Why “Owners Only” Might Not be a Great Idea.

1. It looks like a clique. An “owners only” conference gives the appearance of a “good ole’ boys” network. Is that the way we want to begin the joint venture with the OFA and ANLA? By saying only the anointed may participate?

2. You have to sell the value of the Clinic to more people. An owner who believes in the value of the Clinic may bring 4, 6 or more people. If those folks aren’t allowed to attend, we’ll have to convince more businesses to participate to make up for the folks left at home.

3. Owners are often not the true leaders…the ones who actually get things done. Owners are not often the buyers. They like to think they are the decision makers, but many have delegated most important decisions to the managers they’ll leave behind at home.  This will lead to ineffective networking. Buyers may be more important than owners.

4. Old dogs, old ground. Take a look around and you’ll see there are not that many “young” owners, and very few folks under 40 who have started their own business. This is very different than it was in the 80s. Are the same “old” owners the ones who have new ideas to drive change in our industry? We don’t want the Clinic to be a social club of semi-retired business owners. We need a majority of the attendees to be envisioning a brighter future, not trying to preserve the past.

5. Where do we train and inspire our bright up-and-comers?

Summary

We hope the Management Clinic returns in 2013, and we will support an “owners only” model. (But we won’t really like it.) We hope an “owners only” model would be temporary, a way to refine and reinvent the Management Clinic.  We think it is less important to have only owners in the room as it is to have the “best and brightest.”

The goal should not be to find 1,000 people willing to pay for an educational conference. Let’s not settle for that. The goal should be to get the 1,000 best, smartest, most exciting people in the industry together in an open, sharing environment where they are inspired to dream big and equipped to lead change…who wouldn’t want to attend that meeting?

Thanks for reading! Let us know what you think by posting a comment. If you’re not brave enough for that, you can send me an email too!)

~Art

 

 

Are conferences a thing of the past? Low attendance is no longer just a trend, a temporary response triggered by a tough economy. Lethargic industry-participation is the new reality. Once packed ballrooms and busy, electric hallways are becoming ghost-towns at many conferences. How long will the remaining attendees keep coming back for more? How long can conferences struggle to survive before they are put out of their misery?

If you are a conference organizer or loyal attendee and your event is failing, how can you dramatically and quickly bring back the crowds and the excitement? And if your event is thriving, an exception that proves the rule, how do you avoid losing your momentum like so many others have done?

I don’t have the answer, but the way forward must surely start with understanding the root of the failure. I humbly submit my…

Top 5 Reasons Conferences are Dead.

1. Misery Does NOT Love Company.

It would be easy (and obvious) to say, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Why over-complicate things? Businesses can’t afford to do everything they once did. They have cut back. Some have dropped out of conferences altogether; others have scaled back. When the good times roll, they’ll be back.

But I don’t find this explanation satisfying. It may be true, but it doesn’t help conference organizers know what they can do to fix the problem. It’s basically an abdication of responsibility to forces outside anyone’s control. It is far more useful, yet less comforting, to admit, “The people we want to attend don’t see value in what we offer. If they did, they would come.” The marketplace has spoken. The bad economy has forced businesses to prioritize. Guess what? Business education and conferences weren’t a high priority. Why is that?

They must not see the value.

We should not give in to the temptation to blame the reluctant customer, even though it’s justified. Yes, business decision-makers are foolish to put the brakes on education, innovation and progress. Why stop the flow of new ideas when what you need most is new ideas? It is irrational to retreat into isolation at the exact moment the opposite is called for. But if your industry is suffering through a “Dark Age,” you’ll make little progress in sparking a “Renaissance” by castigating the non-participators.

The “Age of Enlightenment” starts with shining light on that which is most valuable. Return to first principles. Rediscover why it is you have a conference to begin with.

Action steps. You have a decision to make: do you attempt to convince the non-attendees or do you refocus on the attendees? Who’s value do you seek to uncover, understand and enhance? If you want to get non-believers to participate, you must find out why they don’t see value in your conference/association/event. And what do they value? If it’s not worth their time, they won’t attend. At the same time, you can’t neglect what your core, loyal attendees value. They may not be the same. It is probably unwise to try to truly understand both.

Also, consider how you can sell your conference to decision-makers when the value is most clearly seen. This is likely to be during or immediately after the event itself, before the notepads full of great ideas and the dreams of change are buried back at the office. Post-conference euphoria and its sudden decline is well-known, and it is the root cause of my second reason Conferences Are Dying.

2. Disillusionment: It’s not what you know; it’s what you do.

Many business leaders decide against attending a conference because they haven’t put into practice all the things they learned at the last conference they went to. They think, “Why go get more ideas, however good they are, when I still haven’t implemented all (any of) the good ideas I got last year?” Ideas are cheap and easy to come by. It’s what you do with ideas that matters. If your past attendees can’t point to tangible improvements your conference made in their business or personal lives, why should they return for more?

A corollary to this problem is repetition. Same topics. Same speakers.  Same people.  Same information. Do your session titles sound like this? “Your people are your greatest asset.” “Time management: reclaim your life.””Engaging your team.” “Revitalizing corporate culture.” “Facebook and social media: what does it mean for business?” As important as these topics are, it can be a turn-off if people think they’ve heard it all before.

Action steps. How do you ensure attendees implement what they learn, and remember they learned it from you? Is there a way to have specific goal setting and ongoing accountability (which lasts past the post-conference euphoria) a part of their conference experience? How do you make them hungry for more, not overwhelmed by their inability to digest what you’ve already given them? And how to you make them interested in a meal they’ve already tasted? It is important to also consider making the social and relational aspects as important or more important than the education/content. Build and maintain a sense of community. Church attendees keep going back every week not because they’ll hear something new (since the Truth is timeless) but because they know they need to hear it again and again…AND they have a community that helps them on their journey. How can you build a supportive, sharing community? Answer these questions and your conference will prove its value and stave off disillusionment.

3. Unsocial Networks.

Connected. We are always connected. Smartphones and WiFi, texting and status updates. Email, Facebook and Twitter constantly bombard us. We follow and are followed, but where is “Social Networking” really leading us? While technology allows us to connect with more people more frequently, our expanding connections have spread us thin, shortened our attention spans and allowed us to retreat into an isolationist stance with a veneer of participation. We are lurkers online, voyeurs happy to observe from a comfortable distance.

Potential conference attendees think: “I can read the blogs of the speakers. I can watch them on YouTube and follow them on Twitter. I can network more effectively on LinkedIn. I can connect more deeply on Facebook than I can during a five minute coffee break between sessions. I don’t need to go.”

Here’s the irony of social networking: it tends to make us unsocial.

Action steps: Social media and its constant connection isn’t going away, but there will likely be a backlash from many who feel the need to connect old-school style: face-to-face. Be ready for this awakening. How can you position your conference to be the logical place for web-connected networks to gather in real life? How can you co-exist with social media, not in competition with it? Find a poster child or two. Can you identify a few key people who became somewhat dissatisfied with the depth of relationships they had online, and your conference allowed them to connect on a deeper, more meaningful level with people they cared about–not strangers but people they “sort-of” knew from the web? And how can you tell their story? And what do you offer that can’t be found on YouTube or in blogs?

4. Uncomfortably Commercial.

One way over-connected people are dealing with the deluge of data, updates and emails is by tuning out the noise. We’ve got spam filters, caller id, Tivo and Netflix. They’re defense mechanisms to keep us from going insane, and the only way you’re going to get past someone’s defenses is to invade their lives, trick them or get their permission to enter. (I think it’s obvious which one you should choose.) But the net result is we are now more annoyed when presented with unavoidable, unwanted commercial messages. We are used to fast-forwarding through ads, bouncing unwanted emails and hitting the ignore button. So when an attendee sits through an infomercial disguised as a keynote speech or a “lunch and learn” that’s really a “sell-my-stuff to a captive audience,” it’s not going to go over too well.

Many conferences, faced with declining income from attendance fees and hotel rooms, have loosened the constraints on their sponsors and speakers. This is understandable. Get more sponsors and let them have more time to sell and you get more money. But it’s probably the wrong decision.

Who wants to be a captive audience? If your conference has become more sponsor dependent and controlled, you are probably losing  your credibility as quickly as you’re losing attendees.

Action steps: Forget about sponsors. Sounds radical, but you should try it if only as a mental exercise. Focus on the value your attendees get from your conference. Care first about their experience. Make it work for them. Delight the audience. If you have a conference that exists for the benefit of sponsors, you have it backwards.

5. Accidentally Inflexible.

The number one reason conferences are failing? Hotel contracts.

Healthy, sustainable conferences must be able to grow and contract. Suppose there is a life cycle to events and conferences. They start small, with a core group of impassioned, true-believer attendees. It becomes obvious to the outside world that something special happens when this group gets together. More firms flock to attend. Sponsors gladly sign up to get their names in front of the audience. At some point, perhaps over several years or even over decades, the core group that was the heart of the conference moves on, or are diluted to such an extent that the life leaves the party. Attendance wanes, until either the conference finally dies or re-invents itself with another, smaller core group of impassioned true-believers. And the cycle continues. (It may very well be possible to avoid the decline by ensuring the core is healthy and constantly improved.)

What keeps a conference or event from scaling down, retrenching and reinventing? Their hotel contracts. Somebody signed a five-year agreement to fill a thousand rooms and rent a large conference space. And that’s not the only constraint preventing change. The sponsors have been promised big attendance numbers. And what about the speakers? How can we afford the big-names if we don’t have a lot of attendees? How can we get a lot of attendees if we don’t have big name speakers?

All the commitments (contractual and implied) that organizations and conferences make probably seem like good business. Cheaper rooms. Better speakers. More sponsors. But when you don’t plan for decline–when you can’t scale down–you are inflexible. Which means you’ve lost control. Which means you’ll fail.

Action steps: Kill your sacred cows. Don’t worry that others will think you’re desperate. You should be. Right-size your conference.  How can you assemble the best and brightest of your industry? Consider making the conference exclusive, maybe even by invitation only for a few years. Raise the price of admission. Comp the most influential people who are guaranteed to amaze their fellow attendees. A bit too radical? Maybe start a new conference as a sort of life raft for your larger, struggling conference. Maybe it should be an “unconference?” Focus less on getting a lot of people willing to pay to attend. Instead, focus on getting the right people.

Summary

Are conferences a thing of the past? Probably not, but yours might be if you don’t understand the value you offer attendees, not sponsors. Define the value, communicate the value and scale the event down to as few attendees as possible. Then get ready to grow.

Thanks for reading! Share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

~Art

in·spi·ra·tion: The infusion of ideas into the mind.

I cannot praise the American Nursery & Landscape Association (the staff, the industry volunteers and the Board leadership) enough for the amazing event that was the Management Clinic. Over the past decade, the Clinic has meant more to me and my company than any other thing I can think of, and the 2012 edition was as rich a mix of brilliant, insightful ideas, mind-expanding opportunities and meaningful networking as ever. I wish you had been there. You simply cannot understand the excitement, the energy, the passion and the fun that filled every hallway, meeting room and social gathering. Many thanks to all who worked hard to put on the Clinic and to every single attendee who generously chose to leave their business and family for three days of learning and sharing.

Here are some of the many people who inspired and “wow-ed” me this year:

Joe Baer

Joe Baer and his team of “Visual Merchants” from Zen Genius were deservedly the talk of the Clinic for their wonderful concept/display of re-purposed pallets cum garden boutique. Besides being clever, resourceful and beautiful, the truly remarkable thing was how it served as the perfect metaphor for the times: “More with less.” How often have you heard this cliche, or said it yourself? But it is rare to see it so plainly demonstrated in a tangible way. For me, it was a parable into which I could walk and linger, touch and absorb. It seemed to say, “Yes, we have all been humbled by difficult times. True, we cannot afford the standards we once thought essential. But, with creativity and discipline, we can embrace our humility and actually…truth be told…raise the standard higher than it ever was before. All we have are a bunch of busted pallets? Let’s make it awesome!” Well done, Joe!

Chris Hansen

Chris Hansen of GreatGardenPlants.com was amazing. This guy is killing it. His business is so dialed in on success, he didn’t mind sharing exactly how he is selling tons of plants online. I have so much respect for his openness: he literally showed us all the nuts and bolts (including the money side) of how he uses Google and its metrics to drive his business. If OpenHort had an award for “Going Above & Beyond to Share Knowledge with Potential Competitors,” it might just be named after Chris Hansen. He was also a judge for the “Garden Idol” where he showed a keen sense for the potential market viability of the new plants being introduced. There aren’t many “plant geeks” equally as passionate about the business numbers as they are the newest cultivars. You rock, Chris!

 

Garden Idol

If you don’t know, Garden Idol is like American Idol, but for new plants…and it is wild.

This year’s winner was Hort Couture‘s Jim Monroe for the “Under the Sea” collection of coleus. They are pretty cool plants and I look forward to growing them.

Congrats to Hort Couture for the win and lots of respect to Jim Monroe for his emphatic statement from the stage: “These plants will NEVER be in a box store. Over my dead body.” I think he really means it, too. It will be interesting to see how he and a newly-resurrected Novalis will be able to secure unique genetics and prevent them from ever crossing over to he mass-merchant channel. Can it really be done? We’re glad someone’s trying! Atta boy, Jim!

 Spring Meadow Nursery

Spring Meadow deserves a “wow” mention for deciding to NOT compete in this year’s Garden Idol, despite having many worthy plants. Instead, they paid for everyone’s drinks! It was a classy move, and the “party with a purpose” raised several thousand dollars for nursery research and breast cancer research. Well done, Spring Meadow!

Stephanie Stockton

Not only did Stephanie Stockton organize a great Clinic, she also raised a lot of money ($4,000 I think?) at the “party with a purpose” by getting folks to donate to see her have all her hair cut off. Wow. This is the level of commitment and participation we have come to expect from our association staff, and we shouldn’t take it for granted. Remarkable, Stephanie!

The OFA

Speaking of association stuff…I was really glad to connect with several OFA members at the Clinic. The OFA president, Mike McCabe of McCabe’s Greenhouse & Floral, was visible and immersed himself in the whole Clinic experience. In light of the “joint venture” between ANLA and OFA, it was important to have their leadership present. Kudos to Mike! However, I can’t pass up the opportunity to point out that none of the OFA staff attended. I’m sure there are good reasons for this, but I think there are better reasons for why somebody from the OFA staff should have been there. How are we to integrate our two organizations with one of the key goals being to “Further expand and offer more robust educational programs” if they don’t know what our main educational program was really all about? Don’t get me wrong, I am not really upset here. I’m confident the OFA cares about the Clinic. Just consider this a gentle call-out, a simple observation. We expect a lot from our staff, and that’s a good thing!

Bailey, PDSI & Conard-Pyle

It’s interesting to see these three great companies partnering together and finding synergy where there could be isolation. Their brands are complementary, and it was really cool to see them all displayed side-by-side. They aren’t merging or losing their individual identity, but they are very smartly combining their efforts where it makes sense. These guys get it!

 Jonathan Matteson

I’d never heard of Jonathan or his employer, Kellogg Garden Products, before the Clinic, and he wowed me basically because he wore a scarf and fingerless gloves the entire time. Seriously, Jonathan is way more hip than most of us in the industry. But he offered more than just cool, eccentric style. He had a lot of great insights–especially about Twitter, Facebook and all the social media stuff, which were perhaps the most-frequently mentioned topics at the Clinic. Everybody was talking about connecting with their social networks, but Jonathan did it better than the rest, I think. So, he gets a “wow.” Stay warm, Jonathan!

Marcus Sheridan

He calls himself the Sales Lion, and his presentation style was abrasively forceful…but his schtick was backed up by some really brilliant-yet-simple insights into Google, the psychology of buyers and the very nature of business and marketing. This guy was smart, and he didn’t mind sharing all of his strategies and tricks. Whoever found Marcus and invited him to the Clinic: way to go!

 Sid Raisch

I’m a big fan of Sid, so him getting a “wow” is not surprising. At this Clinic, I only heard him speak for five minutes during a “Speed Round,” but his simple appeal to eliminate the word “bid” from our business vocabulary was right on. There are a lot of smart people out there, but Sid stands out because he has something more: wisdom. You can check him out at his website, Advantage Development System. Keep thinking, Sid!

 

Kellee Magee

Honestly, Kellee Magge deserves a lot more than just a few sentences at the end of a blog post. Our industry owes her a lot of thanks for her many years of service. The Clinic is her signature event and this year appears to be her last. If you haven’t already, check out her new venture, MonkeyBar Management. Besides having a cool logo, Kellee and her new company provides “the skills that you need to bridge the gap from where you are to where you need to be.” Specifically, she is offering her services for event and business retreat organization, business development, strategic facilitation and basically just being her amazing self. Thanks, Kellee, for all you have done for ANLA and for all the love you have poured into our companies! Hope you have fun managing your own monkey-bars!

What “wowed” you?

These were just a few of the “wows” I got from Clinic 2012. I’d love to hear what “wow-ed” you. Feel free to share yours here by commenting, or post on Facebook so everyone can see it!

But…

But despite all the fun and valuable learning, the 2012 Clinic will be remembered less for the people who were there than for the people who weren’t.

hu·mil·i·a·tion: Descent from an elevated state or rank to one that is low or humble.

There was a sadness overshadowing this Clinic, for it just may be the last. Attendance was at an all-time low.  So low, in fact, many of us wonder, “Will it return?” I hope so, but it probably won’t be in Louisville and it may never be the same again. (Perhaps it could be better?) Why was attendance less than half what was needed? The green industry is suffering through our own Dark Age, where negativity, blindness and disinterest prevails. Our hope is in the handful of firms that see and are even now leading an exciting, new Renaissance in their businesses and in our associations.

I plan to post later this week my thoughts on why the Clinic “failed” and what we can do about it. Drop me a line if you have anything to share or just to let me know you want to hear what I think! I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

~Art